Many of our emails are sent to recipients who haven't necessarily entered their email information on our website, but are members of political organizations that have endorsed us in our campaign. Those organizations have made their lists public to us having been endorsed. How do we best email these prospects?
Even if those organizations have endorsed, it still doesn't make these recipients more likely to open a message that they didn't request. Emaling prospects is an art, walking the fine line between legitimate outreach and massive spamming. Do it right, and you win new fans; wrong, and you can incur severe consequences.
These severe consequences include having your email relegated to servers with lower deliverability rates, and being banned from the NationBuilder email services altogether. While NationBuilder makes it easy for nonprofits, small businesses, candidates and campaigns to reach out to supporters and legitimate prospects, we have no tolerance for spamming and watch activity on our network closely. While we do allow emails to people who are not explicit opt-ins, your prospects should be people who you think will clearly want to hear from you - excessive bounces and spam reports will result in suspension of email services.
We recommend you tell prospects how you got their email address and then target each group differently. e.g. tailor the message to prospects from organization A differently than you do for prospects of organization B (and differently from supporters who are already expecting email from you). You can send different emails with slightly different messages that appeal to the types of concerns that prompted them to sign up for that organization's list.
Sometimes less is more when it comes to email blasting. Different emails sent to smaller groups of people targeted to their specific niche will go over better than a generic one sent to a large list.
If you are emailing members of your party from a voter file, you can apply the same logic. Split them up by regions and send them different messages. Are potential voters in mid city likely to respond to the same message that potential voters in the suburbs would respond to? You may be interested in adding a specialist to your team to help you with this, if you don't aleady have one.
Smaller targeted emails to prospects are one of the best ways to keep the spam filters at bay. These people may not have directly requested your message, but if you can successfully appeal to them and turn them into fans, you'll be on your way to building a movement.
